San Francisco IndieFest

05/22/2026

Cinema lives! Next Friday, May 29th at the Roxie Theater come join us for a special live cinema event with the illustrious
Rick Prelinger as he brings the 20th edition of "Lost Landscapes of San Francisco" to SF DocFest. It's a night you won't soon forget.

Lost Landscapes is a participatory urban history project where our city of San Francisco shines throughout this wide-ranging, unbounded panorama made from 128 years of San Francisco moving images with a soundtrack made fresh by you, the audience, as the film plays. Come and share the excitement as we build a new history of San Francisco from assembled film ephemera!

Drawn from some 300 newly-unearthed (and a few familiar) archival films, Lost Landscapes 20 recreates the textures and activities of everyday life, labor and play, replaying known and unknown historical moments, daylighting lost and found infrastructures, revealing the scars of settlement and pointing to more hopeful futures. Highlights will include transportation in the air, water and on the land; images of the City's rich and resilient communities; unfamiliar footage of familiar places; countercultures and counterdemonstrators; and unpredictable moments on the streets.

Rick Prelinger is an archivist, filmmaker, writer, educator, and co-founder of the Prelinger Library. His collection of 60,000 films, begun in 1983, was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Since that time Prelinger Archives has again grown to include some 30,000 home movies and 7,000 other film items.

Fri, May 29th, 8:15pm @ Roxie Theater

Grab your tickets here: https://sfdocfest2026.eventive.org/films/69a0aa23b746f43da90df7e5

05/22/2026

We are often called the punk rock film festival of San Francisco so we are embracing it with our opening night film this year at SF DocFest, so get ready to rock 'n roll!!!

"40 Years of Fu**in' Up" is Spinal Tap, but real. It’s a film about the infamous, fairly unfamous, and beloved punk rock band NOFX. This is the unbelievable story about how a group of untalented, drug-addled teenage punks somehow became the most successful independent band in history. And they did it haphazardly all on their own.

“Most people wouldn’t be ok with releasing a film that shows footage of getting whipped in their dungeon, or their drug use for the past 20 years, or dressing up like a cheap rubber w***e, or the ambulance ride when they were naked while puking and sh****ng blood… I’m not like most people.” - Fat Mike

May 28th at 8:15pm
Roxie Theater
3117 16th St
San Francisco CA 94103

The post-screening Q&A moderation will be conducted by both Christy and Chris of C² / Disarray Magazine.

C² (Christy & Chris) are the hosts of Disarray Magazine’s artist spotlight series, covering local LA punk, hardcore, alternative, and underground bands through interviews, live coverage, and documentary-style storytelling.

Before the show (4pm to 8pm) join us next door at the 518 Valencia Gallery for a FREE NOFX pop-up exhibit, plus a band meet and greet.

Grab your tickets to the screening here: https://sfdocfest2026.eventive.org/schedule/69c801087edb042bb5e3975a

05/19/2026

What's better than free bagels and coffee? Hanging out with fellow documentary lovers, filmmakers and funders. Yeap, mark this on your calendar as we're doing a FREE panel, "The Pitch is a Bitch: Getting to 'Yes' in a World of 'No'" at SF DocFest at 11am on Saturday, May 30th at the 518 Valencia Art Gallery.

Two years ago we hosted a panel where we talked about a "diverse" marketplace; whereas today we’re navigating a leaner, more intentional landscape. While the recent "implosion" of streaming commissions and traditional public media shifts has disrupted the old pipeline, it has also cleared the brush for a documentary renaissance centered on artisanal storytelling and deep community impact. But as ever, the most difficult question still remains: "How do you get a funder to say, 'Yes!!!'?"

In this year's panel we will explore the evolving nature of the documentary marketplace, the challenges the industry faces, how best to engage with funders to foster collaborative relationships and enjoy an overall meet and greet with Bay Area funders and colleagues.

Co-presented by Renegade Humanities, come join us for a free panel discussion with some of the illustrious documentary funders and grantmakers based in the Bay Area including: Marcia Jarmel (Director of Filmmaker Services, Jewish Film Institute), Isabella Miller (Program Director, Berkeley Film Foundation), Jannette Angelle Napoli (Senior Manager of Content & Initiatives, ITVS) and Dawn Valadez (Co-Director of the BAVC Media Maker Fellowship), moderated by Joshua Moore, Artist Development Manager of Documentary Film at SFFILM.

11am - Doors open - Hosted Coffee and Bagels
12pm - Panel Discussion
1pm - Wrap Up The Panel and Socialize

RSVP here: https://sfdocfest2026.eventive.org/schedule/69e21d4df2bb43a232ef5f32

05/15/2026

Damn, we're old! But hey, our 25th anniversary of bringing the best, coolest and oddest documentaries from around the world gives us an excuse to celebrate!

Way back in 2001 the inaugural SF DocFest launched in an empty church filled with a burgeoning audience of people just like you who were curious to see real stories onscreen.

So this year, to celebrate the 25th SF Documentary Festival, on Wednesday, May 27th we are presenting 3 films from our 2001 line-up at Artists' Television Access on Valencia St, with tickets specially priced at 2001 prices, only $7.50. So swing by to flashback and to experience our festival's orgins and mingle with filmmakers and other doc lovers as it will be a fun night.

The lineup includes:

"Atomic Ed and the Black Hole" with filmmaker Ellen Spiro in attendance. A story of a scientist-turned-atomic junk collector known as Atomic Ed. More than 30 years ago, Ed quit his job making “better” atomic bombs and he began collecting what he calls “nuclear waste,” non-radioactive high-tech discards from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"Plaster Caster" by Jessica Villines & Jeff Economy - One rock ‘n’ roll legend (or legendary footnote) determined not to just fade away, supergroupie Cynthia Plaster Caster notoriously began making sculptural molds of rock stars’ private parts some 50 years ago.

Gibtown: The Movie by Melissa Edmon (Shachat) - An atmospheric documentary film portrait of the residents and community of Gibsonton, Florida, USA, the off-season and retirement home of thousands of circus and carnival workers.

https://sfdocfest2026.eventive.org/welcome

05/06/2026

Get your reading glasses on, as yeap this is our silver anniversary year! For 25 years we have been bringing some of the best, most interesting or just plain wonderfully weird non-fiction films around the world for Bay Area film fans to enjoy.

SF DocFest continues to provide new and unusual alternative films you won’t find at the multiplex or popular streaming services so check out the catalogue here: https://sfdocfest2026.eventive.org/welcome

05/04/2026

Play ball! Yeap, we at San Francisco IndieFest love both movies and baseball, so we are jazzed about this new Bay Area documentary playing CAAMFest this Saturday, May 10th. You're in for a special treat with Diamond Diplomacy, directed by Yuriko Gamo Romer and produced by Marc Smolowitz

To understand how Shohei Ohtani became one of baseball’s biggest stars, it’s important to look back at a century-long exchange between Japan and the United States. Baseball became the national sport of Japan in 1896, and since then, the U.S. and Japan have maintained a shared love of the sport, even as the countries encountered war and other political tensions.

For the past decade, director Yuriko Gamo Romer has been chronicling the Japanese, American, and Japanese American players who bridged those worlds. Diamond Diplomacy highlights pioneers like Kenichi Zenimura, the “Father of Japanese American baseball,” and his relationship with Babe Ruth. It features interviews with San Francisco Giants’ Masanori “Mashi” Murakami, the first Japanese player to play in Major League Baseball, and Warren Cromartie, an American who played for Nippon Professional Baseball. It tells the history of the 1949 San Francisco Seals Tour of Japan and features stories of Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Lefty O’Doul, and many more.

Executive produced by Glen S. Fukushima and Steven Okazaki, the documentary – which was the 2025 runner-up at the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film – is a tribute to baseball’s cultural and political impact across generations.

Grab your tickets here: https://caamfest.com/2026/movies/diamond-diplomacy/

05/01/2026

What in the bloody hell?!? We thought this was an April Fool's Day joke at first, but then realized it's almost May!

To file under youu’ve got to be kidding me:

"At the JFK security checkpoint, according to a post on co-director David Borenstein’s Instagram, a TSA agent told Talankin that the Oscar in his bag could be used as a weapon. “She wouldn’t let him carry it on board.”

https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/oscar-statue-mr-nobody-against-putin-director-missing-1235191582/

‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ Oscar, Confiscated By TSA, Is Missing

04/29/2026

Bay Area cinephiles are in for some real treats at CAAMFest, but we're particularly excited about their Closing Night documentary Traces of Home by director Colette Ghunim and Bay Area producer/editor Sara Maamouri.

This award-winning film has filmmaker Colette Ghunim embarking on a journey with her parents to find the ancestral houses they were forced to flee as children in Mexico and Palestine. Colette’s initial desire to heal her disconnect from her cultures and her parents reveals an internal quest to discover home within herself.

It's a winner, so head over to the AMC Kabuki on Sunday, May 10th for the 6:30pm screening. Grab your tickets here: https://caamfest.com/2026/movies/traces-of-home/

And as a follower of San Francisco IndieFest, you can use this promo code, SFDOCXCAAM, which is good for $2 off regular ticket price for screening.

04/27/2026

Word up. The inextricable connection between local journalism and cinemagoing can't be emphasized enough. While the times are tough, we are thankful for the local Bay Area press who are keeping the flame alive with care, creativity and curiosity.

Local newspapers once promoted film culture through reviews, listings, and interviews. As local news collapsed, so did the infrastructure that encouraged people to see films.

Remaining outlets, newsletters, and community radio stations can revive local film coverage with regular columns and calendars. Cinemas and festivals can support this by providing advance information and access, making it easier for local writers to cover their programs and rebuild the information loop between screens and neighborhoods.

04/25/2026

Did you have a chance to the wonderful My Own Normal by Alexander Freeman at SF DocFest? If so help spread the word as the film is now out on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

Watch the film here: https://myownnormalmovie.com/

Or consider adding your review on the platform or
over at IMDb - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15014930/ or Rotten Tomatoes - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/my_own_normal